Category Archives: Somewhat Serious Business

After years of providing literary laughs, The Annual is proud to announce their newest venture: The AP (Annual Podcasts) – Podcasts not associated with the Associated Press. From this point on, you will be able to find our incredible backlog of print humor right hear on TheAnnualOnline.com but we are changing our focus to podcasts.

Why are we getting out of the print game? For one, many of our writers have been snatched up by big name outlets like Cafe, National Lampoon, The Haven and The Weekly Humorist. Meanwhile, at our homebase in Frederick, MD we’ve shifted focus to more audible concepts. So if you head over to AnnualPodcasts.com you’ll find the home of some of your new favorite shows. From our monthly live show The Last Hurrah to our newest podcast Now Available on Video Cassette. Give these great shows a listen and join us as we create new favorites for you to enjoy every week!

Over the summer, Annual staffer David Luna took a road trip to New York to record and interview Courtney Reynolds. Courtney is a stand up comic working in the city, he hosts the show If You’re Reading This Quit Your Day Job, every Thursday at Bungas Den.

You won’t want to miss this original Annual video made in collaboration with the Something Art Collective, so check back here on Friday morning!

It’s been quite the week. I suppose I ought to start by saying I’m sorry I dreamt this nightmare into reality. When I wrote Great Again over summer, when we read it for an audience on Monday night, I never imagined that it would become a reality. Of course, I’m not just talking about the primary concept of a Trump presidency, but the very real potential that Ben Carson may run the Dept of Health and Human Services, the impending friendship between Putin and President-elect Trump. Just this morning David Luna sent me an article about an eventual revolt from evangelicals. I never thought we’d get as far as Act Two, certainly not this soon.

I stayed up late with Last Hurrah band leader Thom Huenger, Editor-At-Large Emily Perper, and Annual staffer IO Duarte on the night it went down. We watched the results roll in as time slowed down and we steadily went comatose, heads in our phones, refreshing twitter. Eventually we went to bed and before I knew the final results I spent my time between snooze alarms in a fetal position under the covers, praying, more than I had in past 5 years, hoping for a miracle that wouldn’t come. Then I went to work, where we broadcast a speech about the “need for unity” from a man who spent that past two years pledging to deport hispanics and ban muslims. Suddenly, this lunatic had the power and with the power came a sudden forgiveness of the immoral diarrhea that spewed from his pursed orange lips on a daily basis.

I knew I wouldn’t have anything on the site for the next few days. I didn’t know what to say or do. Nothing felt funny. Some things still don’t. At what point can Great Again be considered a dark comedy rather than just dark?

As the initial shock passed, the motivation began to set in. The defiance. The Huffington Post originally ran an editorial note with all Trump-related articles to remind us that he is a racist sex offender. Once the man became “President-elect” they pulled that note. We’re not here to play that nice. Great Again took the gloves off with Trump as soon as he took the stage, and we’re not going to put on oven-mitts because he’s got a lofty new title. What we need now is comedy, laughter, some good in this world. We’re going to be working our asses off over the next four years. We’re going to be here for you. New voices, bringing goofball comedy, dark comedy, cutting comedy, honest comedy. We may need to take some time here and there to process things, but this marks a new era for all of us and we at The Annual won’t let you down.

At this point, I’d typically ask you to support our patreon and help us grow, but today I’d much rather you turn your support to the Southern Poverty Law Center who will need as much help as humanly possible now that there’s a KKK-enabler headed straight for the White House.

Peace be with you all. We’ll be back on Monday with some fresh laughs.

As advertised and mentioned on the show, last night was the last Last Hurrah of 2016. Two years ago we interviewed a ghost, albeit, that ghost was Andrew Michaels in a sheet, last night we interviewed a real one (depending on whether or not you trust ouija boards).

A lot has changed since we started the show in 2014. Many familiar faces have come and gone, but one thing remained about the same and that was our audience size. Hard as we tried, it was generally difficult to break double digits, which is fine when you’re starting a show but after 93 weeks, a lack of audience growth can be a little taxing. While talking to our new Managing Director at the Maryland Ensemble Theatre, I asked her about how we could grow our audience and she suggested that perhaps we did the show too much. Her recommendation: do The Last Hurrah on the last Sunday of every month, rather than every Sunday. This would be the biggest change to the show since Thom Huenger joined the show as band leader, and I was almost immediately game to change the schedule for following reasons:

I had personally grown a little tired, the show didn’t feel that fresh for me anymore. There were times when I would think about the lack of audience growth and consider ending the show entirely or perhaps finding a new host to take over week after week. I love what we had created but there was a part of it that had begun to stagnate.

As a result of stagnation, booking was had become the last thing on my mind, most shows featured the same batch of people based on who was in town at the time. By changing the format, we could set aside one day on our schedules, book multiple guests, possibly bigger guests and up the variety of guests and what we do with them.

As far as content goes, there are a lot of elements to the show we always wanted to try but never had the chance to throw together. By performing a month-to-month basis we take more time to develop material for the show, sketches, games, all kinds of things to make the show more enjoyable.

The chance to really restructure the show and find our voice. The Last Hurrah has steadily evolved over the years. If you listen to our first couple of episode and pick out some episodes from this past summer, you’ll hear a very different show. In this next 14 weeks, we hope to do some reformatting, solidifying certain elements of the show and perhaps cutting others altogether.

In taking two months off from The Hurrah and cutting back, we hope to provide you the viewer/listener with a more solid product. Something immensely funnier and, with any luck, unmissable. Tomorrow, I hope you will greatly enjoy our Ouija Board episode and that you’ll come back to join us on January 29th for a fresh new Hurrah.

Two months ago The Annual went on a three week hiatus. During this time we launched our Patreon account and I, Kevin Cole, wrote a play called Great Again.

Great Again takes a satiric look Trump’s dystopian future, and could more specifically be referred to as Our Town for the Trump Administration. The story starts four years into his presidency as we are guided by our narrator, Ben Carson, through the world of Trump. The story also features the likes of Ted Cruz, Vladimir Putin and of course, Ivanka.

I’ll be directing the show as a METx production for Maryland Ensemble Theatre this fall with show dates on Nov 6 & 7th (election eve) and Nov 11 & 12. Mark your calendars.

Want to get involved!? We’ll be hosting Auditions on Monday Sept 26th from 6:30pm-9pm at MET (31 West Patrick St. Frederick, MD) for the following roles: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Paul Manafort & Stephen Miller (The Joint Chiefs). You can email Kevindotcole@gmail.com to set up an audition slot.

Last month we sent out a plea asking readers to lend a hand so that we could compensate our writers. Thanks to Patreon backers, we are currently raising about $50 a month for our staffers with plenty of bonuses available to backers.

Want an Annual T-shirt? Past issues? exclusive buttons and an exclusive podcast version of the interviews on our site? Then back us today! Right now you can go into The Annual vault and hear David Luna’s interview with Greg Proops for only $2 a month!

Yesterday an internet giant fell as we collectively gave GAWKER a fond farewell. Of course, this really depends on where you stood in relation to GAWKER: if they outed you or published your sex tape, maybe it wasn’t such a fond farewell. For the rest of us, we stood in silent respect as the site went out with a literal bang.

Here at The Annualwe promise to deliver our own demise in the same manner as GAWKER, to uncover a sex scandal so big that it shuts down our own site. Seriously, we are dedicated to bringing laughs, biting satire and interviews with up and coming comedic forces to our readers. High-profile sex is the furthest thing from our radar, when celebrity Ps land in celebrity Vs (or other Ps) it’s our policy to stay out of their business. But what should happen if that scandal makes its way over to our radar? That’s when we unleash the play by plays, the safe for work editions, the street corner bootlegs, the virtual reality recreations. We will light that flare in one final attempt to make a name for ourselves and we will go out with it.

It’s the internet-publishers oath that all things shan’t be unseen and while some of our material may be an exception to this rule, the sex scandal that shutters our shop will not. We have no intention of closing down the site anytime soon, but trust that when we do it will be because millions cannot unsee Brad Pitt’s triple butthole or Judd Apatow in a compromising position with Paul Rudd in a bear suit (à la The Shining).